Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Leblanc, in full Maurice-Marie-Émile Leblanc, (born Dec. 11, 1864, Rouen, France—died Nov. 6, 1941, Paris), French author and journalist, known as the creator of Arsène Lupin, French gentleman-thief turned detective, who is featured in more than 60 of Leblanc’s crime novels and short stories.

Leblanc abandoned his law studies to become a pulp crime writer. Commissioned in 1905 to write a crime story for the French periodicalJe sais tout, he created “L’Arrestation d’Arsène Lupin” (“The Arrest of Arsène Lupin”) and achieved immediate and long-lasting popular success. His first collection of short stories appeared in 1907. Leblanc used as a recurrent element the suspicion that Lupin may not have reformed completely. Many of Leblanc’s stories were adapted into successful films in the 1930s.